Dish Network signs LTE-Advanced chipset pact with Qualcomm

It’s still a bit early to get excited about the next generation of LTE, called “LTE-Advanced,” that carriers are planning to roll out in a couple of years at the earliest. But Dish Network wants to make sure it’s keeping up with the competition, which is why it has already locked in a deal with Qualcomm to develop LTE-Advanced chipsets for future devices, reports FierceWireless. Dish has a 40MHz chunk of satellite spectrum on the 2GHz band that it’s itching to use for terrestrial LTE-Advanced services if the Federal Communications Commission gives it permission to do so later this year. For the uninitiated, LTE-Advanced will represent a major upgrade over current LTE technologies, as the International Telecommunications Union has said that LTE-Advanced will deliver average download speeds up to 100Mbps (which, coincidentally, was its original requirement for a service to be defined as “4G” before the group caved to pressure from carriers and withdrew its position).